VL-IV: Chap8- Frenesi and DL

[kelber at mindspring.com]

In chapter 6, we meet Frenesi first-hand and learn about her family's past.  In chapter 8, we go through the same process with DL.

We never learn about Zoyd's family.  Although he's the first person we meet in the book, giving him quasi-protagonist status, he's robbed of that status by this time.  The book's now revolving around the central relationship between Frenesi and DL.  They cute-meet as damsel in distress and knight in shining armor.  Frenesi's first turned on by DL's leather-man on a bike aura, even after she discovers that DL's female.  "'Somebody sent you, right?'"  She's secretly hoping that DL's a cop?  What does DL see in Frenesi?  Is she simply a hot hippie chick, ripe for the picking?  Or does she (along with Brock Vond) hunger for the idealism that Frenesi represents?  Assuming that DL is a nihilist.  The response to the '60s has been a cynical, crushing nihilism:  it was all hype, it didn't lead to anything except cop-outs, co-optation, drugs, and despair.  That's part of what TRP's wrestling with in the portrayal of their relationship, personified by Prairie looking for Frenesi's image in the mirror, but finding DL's instead.

Laura